When I first quit my job to stay home with my kids I had big plans. Being with my kids was my only job and I was going to make the most of it. Those warnings about “appreciating the time with your kids because it goes by so fast” were not going to be lost on me!

I learned, rather quickly, however, that it’s really hard to appreciate EVERY moment, like the ones when, sleep-deprived and delirious, I would curl up on the floor of my younger son’s bedroom, praying that my mere proximity to him would help him drift back to sleep at four in the morning. I wasn’t trying to wish away his babyhood but, at that moment, while he giggled and babbled at me through the slats of his crib, clearly not going back to sleep, I would silently repeat the mantra, this too shall pass.

Then there were those mind-numbing days when we would make our daily park/library/grocery store circuit, desperate to fill the hours before bedtime. Soon they will start school full time and I will finally be able to get things done, I would think.

Once they were in school I longed for the days when they would be able to do their own homework without my nagging, take care of their own things, and eventually be able to drive so I could skip the carpools and late night pick ups. Just this summer, for instance, as I waited up—again—for my youngest son to get home, I caught myself thinking, once summer is over and he is back at school I can finally go to bed before midnight.

This too shall pass…

And then it did.

And now summer is over and it’s my youngest son’s last first day of high school and I’m wondering what happens when this passes??

What happens to me when my nest is empty?

When I dropped him off for the first day of his senior year of high school I thought I was simply sad because it had all gone by so quickly; he would be heading to college next year and, given his uncommunicative nature, I would probably rarely, if ever, talk to him. But then, when I realized that at this time next year I will have no one left to drive to school (or pick up after or make dinner for or dote on…), my unease grew rapidly. Suddenly I was faced with the prospect of doing whatever I want with my time and I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be.

In my rising panic I turned to my good friend (who also happens to be a therapist) to help me deal with my immediate need to calm the f**k down. Christina Jones, LCSW, suggested that I view this new phase of my life as a time to figure out who I am today and who my “future self” can be.

“What if you see this as an opportunity to discover who you are now and accept that it might not be who you used to be, even as a mother?” she asked me.

I could tell this was not going to be a quick fix.

“You can never really go back,” she added, “But you can take who you’ve been – in every chapter in your life – and figure out who you are now. That can be exciting.”

Hmmm…exciting, terrifying, anxiety provoking, all of the above?

This isn’t the first pivot I’ve had to make. When I decided to go from full-time lawyer to full-time mom, I went into a bit of spiral, as well. I would joke that I was a “retired lawyer” instead of admitting that I was a stay-at-home-mom – I simply couldn’t let go of that persona even though it was my idea to make the change. It took me a while to let go of who I had been—or thought I was—and to come to terms with the idea that my focus had shifted and continued to shift with each new phase in my and my family’s lives.

And here we are again; new phase, new focus.

This time, as I plan my next act, I will try to be more mindful of the passing days and try to embrace even the moments that can’t end fast enough. In a year I will be a “retired stay-at-home-mom,” and who knows what else. Maybe “the mom who has to nag her college graduate son who moves back home for a year to save his money while he works before grad school”?

I know we’ve talked a lot about dating before (even when you didn’t ask my opinion) but I wanted to give you your own handy-dandy written “Guide” in case you are ever wondering what I would tell you and I’m not around. Call it, Mom’s Guide to Dating.

Don’t roll your eyes.

Here goes:

Don’t be an asshole. You heard me. If I find out that you are treating your significant other badly I will personally kick your ass.

Don’t be a doormat. This is not the opposite of being an asshole. Don’t always give in to your significant other just to keep the peace. If she wants to see Star Wars and you want to see Inside Out make an argument for why you should pick the movie this time. Or compromise – there’s nothing wrong with compromise. If she insists that you always give in – move on. Don’t sell your soul.

Move forward at a mutually agreed pace. No one should dictate how quickly a relationship progresses. Both parties need to be comfortable.

Laugh – a lot. Not at her (or at anyone, for that matter), but with her. Remember, if you guys can’t laugh at the stuff that makes each of you smile – move on.

Don’t let Hallmark be your guide for gift giving. I personally hate Valentine’s Day (as you know). Your father has not been allowed to give me a gift on Valentine’s Day for the 25 years we’ve been married. Sure, for a few years he tried to give me flowers the day after Valentine’s Day but, no…just don’t. One caveat: if the person you are dating LOVES Valentine’s Day or Sweetest Day or any of the other made up holidays (yes, I’m holding back a comment) you should acknowledge the day with something (just remember that the florists jack up the prices on Valentine’s Day so don’t blow a paycheck on a dozen red roses – especially if she is demanding them). Remember, it’s the thought that counts.

It’s the little things that matter. I swear.

Find someone who likes to do the stuff you like to do (but not necessarily everything you like to do – see #8 below). Your dad and I bonded over Chicago Blackhawks hockey, horse racing and eating out. It was a great place to start.

Have separate interests (this is not the opposite of #7, above). Remember you are separate people. I do know couples who do EVERYTHING together and haven’t killed each other – yet. These are the outliers. It’s good to have separate interests – it gives you something to talk about and something to share – occasionally – with the person you are dating.

DO NOT alienate your friends (make sure your girlfriend doesn’t alienate hers either). I lost many a friend over the years to the “I’m dating someone and I need to spend every waking moment with him/her because that’s what couples do.” Ugh. If your dad and I didn’t have our friends around I’m not sure if we could have been together this long. Sure, your dad and I do a lot together but I also like going to the theater (he only like musicals), running (he HATES running), dancing (he can’t dance), and overanalyzing just about everything (he has no patience). Similarly, I have zero interest in playing poker in Vegas, watching European soccer and skiing. That’s what our friends are for.

Apologize when you do or say something stupid. No one is perfect and mistakes will be made. Just don’t make it a pattern of do-something-stupid-apologize-later. Then you are just being an asshole (see #1 above). Also, if you are dating someone who is stuck in that pattern – move on.

If your relationship has run its course have a face-to-face conversation. No ghosting, no break up texts, no social media announcements – I don’t care what the media or your friends say is the norm nowadays. Anything short of a face-to-face conversation makes you a jerk. Yes, it will suck; yes, she may be really, really pissed; and, yes, you will potentially be hurting someone but eventually, when the scars have faded, at least she won’t be able to say you weren’t honest and respectful.

I was flipping through channels on television the other day and came across the movie, Never Been Kissed, starring Drew Barrymore as a 25-year-old newspaper reporter who returns to high school for a story.

It’s not a horror film.

Ok, not really but it could be considered one by some because, really, who on earth would want to relive their high school days??

Don’t get me wrong. I actually liked high school when I was there. I had friends I really liked, classes I enjoyed and an all around good experience.

I still wouldn’t go back.

Even if I could go back knowing everything I know now (like, boys are not worth that much energy at that age and you should really only be friends with people who make you laugh), I still wouldn’t do it.

On the other hand, I’d go back to college in a heartbeat. You would think that college would be wrought with so much more pressure than high school, with the whole what are you studying because when you leave here you need a job to support yourself but I found that most people found their college experience to be a bit more liberating..College was a time when everything seemed possible. We had the freedom to study whatever we wanted, to figure things out without 24/7 parental supervision, and to be who we wanted to be without feeling like we were under a microscope (even though, of course, no one was paying attention to anyone but themselves during high school).

Maybe it was the high school I went to or the school that my kids attend but at least for me, these are the top reasons why I would never, ever, even for a few million dollars, go back to high school:

Being surrounded by people who have undeveloped pre-frontal cortices, aka being surrounded by people who do stupid shit all the time but can’t help themselves.

Algebra

The boredom of taking the same classes Every. Single. Day. 180 days of Chemistry? Ugh.

Taking classes that you have to take instead of taking classes that interest you. There are so many cool classes offered at my son’s high school—glass blowing! Shakespeare’s Literary Traditions! Forensic Science! Multi-variable calculus (Ha! Totally kidding. See #2 above)—but he won’t be able to take any of them. Between his high school’s requirements and the classes that colleges expect you to take in high school there is no room for the really out-of-the box electives.

High school dances. First, there’s the anxiety over who to ask or whether you will be asked, then there’s the ridiculous need to ask your date creatively because NO ONE just says, “Hey, do you want to go to Homecoming?” anymore; then there’s the cost to attend a party that no one likes because, let’s face it, the dance is boring; and, of course, there is spending the entire evening with someone who you said yes to a month before the dance but now you can’t remember why you agreed. (See #1 above for a possible explanation).

Having to wake up really early every day to go somewhere you would rather not be for at least another three hours (hmmm…that sounds a lot like a bad job).

Gym class in the middle of the day where you have to run laps but there’s no time after running to shower. Seriously??

Cliques, Mean Girls and Social Climbing. It starts early and often but the best part (or the worst depending on your perspective) is one’s clique or status in high school is sooooooooo irrelevant after graduation. If we could only get our kids to believe that.

How about you? Would you go back to high school if you could? Why or why not? What would you add to this list???

I was driving my younger son and his friend to soccer practice when they both started lamenting how busy they are this summer. My son’s friend is starting driver’s education as soon as soccer ends because, as he explained with a touch of sarcasm, “I can’t have one day with nothing to do.” My son groaned in sympathy. “I know,” my son added. “I don’t have a single day off this summer.”

Insert eye roll here.

I have no sympathy for this complaining. First of all, taking driver’s ed and playing soccer were my son’s requests, not mine, (as if I want another teenage driver in my house!) and, more importantly, he was complaining about being bored two days after school was out!

It would be great if he could have one of those idyllic 70’s summers. I can picture it perfectly: he would yell up the stairs in the early morning to say goodbye to me, the screen door slapping behind him before I can react. Then he would head to his best friend’s house on his bike and they would wander the neighborhood picking up other friends while looking for something to do, eventually following the railroad tracks to find the body before Keifer Sutherland and the other greasers could find it.

All kidding aside, I wish he could have one of the carefree summers of my youth.

But he can’t.

They no longer exist.

Unless we parents collectively decide to yank our kids out of ALL activities my son will be home—alone—playing video games and watching YouTube videos, all day, EVERY DAY while his peers continue with their extensive summer plans.

This trend is not going anywhere especially if you factor in the get-into-college-summer-resume-building frenzy of activities that all high school teenagers seem to be involved in.

My son is a rising high school sophomore and according to the Internet (where everything is true) my son should be on a service trip in Guatemala or working on a novel or starting a company in our garage (although that would be nice…).

With nothing but soccer and driver’s education on his agenda, his college admissions resume will be light.

She believes that free time will morph into time spent “cooking, biking, building models, drawing, talking to Grandma, reading books from the library, keeping a journal, feeling bored, making money mowing lawns or washing cars, noodling around on the piano or the guitar, learning how to drive, going for a swim, daydreaming in the hammock, lying on the grass staring up at the clouds.”

Hmm…I don’t know many teens who would fill their days daydreaming in a hammock or talking to their grandparents. I know my kid wouldn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that teens should not spend their summers padding their high school resumes but should they really spend their summers doing nothing?

I have a better idea: let’s tell our teens to get jobs.

Not an “internship” at a family friend’s company but a real job. Preferably an annoying job with a bad boss, mean customers and a lot of responsibility.

This works on so many levels. Not only will your teen have some activity to fill his days but, if you, or your kid, care about the whole resume-building exercise, he will develop skills he would never develop if he was on a 3-week trip to the Galapagos Island with a staff to help him navigate the experience.

Maybe, because I’ve been through the get-into-college rodeo already, I recognize that the over-priced, completely scheduled, 2-week summer service trips and the full-time internships that Lythcott-Haims mentions aren’t fooling any admissions counselors.

What stood out on my older son’s resume wasn’t his two-week trip to a tropical paradise to tag turtles (yes, we were those parents) but his summer jobs as a baseball coach and a camp counselor for nine-year-olds. Talk about developing communication and problem solving skills! And those were just the skills needed to deal with the parents.

But, and this is important, he didn’t get those jobs with an eye towards his high school resume; he took those jobs to make money and because he likes kids. The rest (the experience, the learned skills, the connections) was just a bonus.

So, when your kid asks to go to Hawaii for three weeks to help the dolphins or you feel the itch to sign your kid up for one more learn-to-code class, hand your son or daughter the Help Wanted section from the local paper instead.

Then start planning your trip to a tropical paradise with the money you will save.

My younger son and I had a little spat the other day because I would not let him have a sleepover.

My reason?

He has been sick since mid-December with a stomach virus, the flu, strep throat and most recently, a sinus infection that put him on a second 10-day course of antibiotics that he finished just three days before the requested sleep over. I made the crazy (to him) statement that I wanted him to get some rest so he could recover from this string of illnesses.

His response? “You are so overprotective! People get sick. Who cares?!”

He’s right, people do get sick but sleeping does help them recover. (Besides, I HATE sleepovers but that wasn’t part of my argument at the time).

He’s also correct that I am overprotective…ish. In my defense, I pointed out that I was willing to let him go to Italy this summer as part of his Latin class. “That seems sort of reckless if you think about it,” I told him.

He scoffed. “The only reason you agreed to let me go is because you knew that my classmates’ parents would say no,” he told me. “You knew I wouldn’t want to go without my friends.”

We will never know because, of course, as I knew, his classmates’ parents said no.

See, where my oldest is a little more cautious my youngest leaps before he looks. So, I have to say things like, “Can you not run down the ice-covered sidewalk? It’s a little slippery after the ice storm.”

Does that mean I’m overprotective or is it my job to warn my accident-prone son of the dangers that he would never notice until it was too late and we were in the ER…again.

I know, I know. Boys will be boys, but does that mean I’m overly cautious when I suggest that maybe he NOT ski straight down a mountain.

Well, according to my 14-year-old I am.

Here are 10 more examples of things that I’ve said that my youngest found unreasonable, restrictive and just plain no fun. I call them parenting decisions; he calls them torture:

I told him he couldn’t have a motorized mini-bike when he was 10-years-old because he would drive it on the street and it can fit under a car and, well, he was 10 (have you seen what can happen with those things??);

I made him wear a bike helmet;

I had to be allowed to “friend.” “like,” and “follow” him on all of his social media accounts (and, yes, I know that he might have other accounts I don’t know about but his brother does…);

I say crazy things like, “Be careful!” and “Don’t do anything stupid,” when he is engaging in any activity that could result in bodily injury and/or death like skiing, climbing a tree, or being a boy;

I talk to him about the dangers of drug addiction, alcohol abuse and unprotected sex – often – and usually over his very loud objections about discussing this topic with his mom;

I told him – all 5′ 5″ and 115 pounds of him – that he could not tryout to be the kicker for the high school football team (did I mention that he is only 115 pounds?!);

I don’t let him drink coffee before bed (yes, he’s asked);

I make him eat things like fish and vegetables because they are good for him;

I make him set his social media accounts to private so strangers can’t access them and I tell him not to share his passwords with anyone even when he insists that no one he knows would do anything stupid like log on to his accounts and post inappropriate things;

And the most ridiculous thing that I make him do?

I make him tell me where he is going and (gasp!) who he is going to be with!

This is an emotional time in our house: our oldest is leaving for college and our youngest is starting high school.

I have no control over the events that are unfolding and I’m not ready.

It would be fine if I was the only one in the house who felt this way, but that’s not the case, of course. There can never be one person in the house who is stressed – it’s like a virus.

For instance, last week my younger son had tryouts for the high school soccer team and he was a bundle of nerves, so I was walking on eggshells wondering what I was supposed to be doing to be supportive. Should I ask him any questions when he talks about tryouts? Should I ignore him? Should we distract him? He would come off the field and I would try to find just the right amount of humor and silliness to take the edge off…unless he wasn’t in the mood for humor and silliness, in which case there was silence.

That was fun.

And, I’m overtired because I’ve been staying up late waiting for my oldest to come home from saying his goodbyes to friends leaving for college and then I’m up at the crack of dawn to drive my youngest to his tryouts.

No sleep + no control = over emotional mommy and that’s not a good thing…for anyone.

Then, of course, my son is leaving in 3 days (or three days, 11 hours and 26 minutes according to the Welcome Week page on the college website that I just checked).

3 days!

Why couldn’t he have left last year when he was a total pain in the ass? Last year I would have gladly moved him out of our house and into a dorm many, many hours away with barely a glance back.

But now he’s become sweet again and pleasant to be around and nice to his brother!

What is wrong with him!

So, yes, I’m fragile right now and I get teary-eyed at the littlest things. Yesterday, for instance, I got a delivery notification for a table I bought that will be delivered on August 25. My first thought: my son won’t be here to see it. I shed a tear!

It’s ridiculous.

Do I sound a bit manic? Well, I am. Nothing, at this moment, is within my control and I need to control something.

So I organize.

I may not be able to control what is happening in my life but I can control what goes into my junk drawer and how well my fridge will be organized.

Thankfully the times when I’ve felt that I’ve had little or no control in my life have coincided with packing and organizing.

For instance, moving after I got married was a bit overwhelming but I distracted myself by looking for great baskets and drawer organizers at the Container Store; having a baby was also a bit stressful but I passed the time searching for the perfect bin, box, and shelving system for my kid; and, when my dad was dying, I distracted myself by helping my mom unpack and organize the house that they had just remodeled and moved into.

I am great at organizing under duress.

Now, as I get ready to move my kid out of my house and into his dorm room I have become maniacal about plastic storage bins. Wherever I go I have found an endless supply of plastic bins in every shape, size and color you can imagine.

And believe me, I can imagine a use for every one of them.

That three-drawer number in blue? It’s the perfect size for school supplies right next to his desk and a great height for a bedside table!

The extra long bin with the hinged lid? Perfect for storing wiffle ball bats, golf clubs and tennis rackets under the bed.

That little red container is perfect for first aid supplies! (Get it? First aid? Red?)

Don’t worry, I didn’t buy any color-coded bins…yet, and I’ve held back from slapping labels on the side of each container which, I realized would be mortifying for my kid but, believe me, I really, really want to!

My husband thinks I’m nuts and my kid just shakes his head but I don’t care.

I can’t control what’s going to happen to my kid but he will be the most organized freshman on campus…at least until I drive away.

I didn’t realize that conversations about the birds and the bees would continue long after my initial “this is how babies are made and no, it’s nothing like a chicken” talk that I had with my kids. I really thought that you have “the talk” and never speak of such things again. But with two teenaged boys I’ve come to appreciate the importance of continuing a dialogue—especially when one of those teens is dating.

So, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to share some relationship advice with my kids (and you). It’s either that or let my kids get their information from TV, movies and a bunch of their friends who also have no idea how to have a healthyish relationship.

Find my 5 Steps For a Successful Marriage at Manilla and on Yahoo Finance: